A judge with a crushing caseload has maybe an afternoon to understand a family two people spent decades building. Joy Rosenthal's whole argument is that this is the wrong tool for the job, and that most parents have far more say over how their divorce goes than they realize.

Joy Rosenthal represented children in New York family court for about a decade before becoming a divorce mediator, and she now teaches family law at CUNY Law School. She also speaks openly, though rarely, about having lived through domestic violence herself. On this return visit she and Lisa move past mediation to what a parent needs to know before, during, and after a divorce, with the effect on the kids running through all of it.

A lot of the hour is about not pulling children into the conflict. Kids are loyal by nature, Joy says, staying attached even to a parent who cannot care for them and protective of a parent being hurt while still loving the other one. So a child does not need to know why the marriage ended, should never be treated as a confidant, and is best served by a parent who stays neutral about the other. When a child witnessed violence, she offers a simple order of operations: reassure them you are okay, then turn it toward how they feel, and never tell them it did not happen. And when a child is still required to spend time in an unsafe home, she comes back to what you can control, being the unconditional, solid rock they return to.

The final stretch is about the process itself, and the cost of not understanding it. Divorce comes down to four things to work out, support, property division, parenting time, and child support, and blame is rarely one of them; you do not get more because the other person behaved badly. Joy and Lisa walk through the mistakes that drain money and goodwill, and Joy describes her course, Landing on Your Feet, built for people at the very beginning rather than the veterans of a long case.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why family court is a poor instrument for families, and how mediation or collaborative law lets you shape your own decisions
• Why your child never needs to know why you're divorcing, and why your kid is not your confidant
• What judges, especially in New York, look for: which parent encourages the child's relationship with the other
• How to respond when your child witnessed violence and asks about it: reassure first, then help them process
• Why you can't control the other home, and how to be the solid rock your child comes back to
• The four things every divorce has to settle: support, property, parenting time, and child support
• Why "fair" and "he did me wrong" don't move a court, and where blame actually belongs
• The costly mistakes: venting to your lawyer, taking bar-stool advice, and expecting the system to punish lying

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Joy's path: from representing kids to divorce mediation
5:00 Why the law was built for business, not families
7:00 Can mediation or collaborative law handle high conflict?
9:00 Domestic violence, and what really counts as physical
13:00 Why kids stay loyal to a parent who hurts them
16:00 The mistakes that pull kids into the conflict
19:00 When your child witnessed violence: how to talk about it
23:00 Being the solid rock when your child still visits the other parent
26:00 The price of ignorance, and the four things every divorce settles
30:00 Venting to your lawyer, bar-stool advice, and the myth of justice
37:00 Joy's "Landing on Your Feet" course, and where to find her

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Joy Rosenthal — mediation and her divorce course: https://joyrosenthal.com
🔗 Joy Rosenthal on Instagram (@joymediator): https://www.instagram.com/joymediator

🎧 More with Joy Rosenthal on this podcast
Ep 68: How Divorce Mediation Actually Works
Ep 70: The Four Things Every Divorce Must Settle
Ep 116: Taking Your Power Back in Divorce Mediation

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Your phone number can reveal more about you than your social security number, and to a controlling ex it's one of the most dangerous things you hand out. In this episode, privacy and cybersecurity expert Vance Long returns to help Lisa map what digital surveillance really looks like in a high-conflict separation, and what to do about it.

Vance explains why an ex doesn't need to be a hacker to track you, why children's devices increasingly belong in custody decrees, and how SIM-card cloning and oversharing put you at risk. He walks through the security basics most people skip (changing the administrator password, turning on two-factor authentication, and checking your email for quiet forwarding rules) and closes on where this is heading, including AI voice cloning that needs less than five minutes of your voice.

This is strategic education, not legal or security advice for your specific situation.

✅ WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
 ✅ Why your phone number can expose more than your social security number
 ✅ How a controlling ex can track a location without any special skills
 ✅ Why your kids' devices may need to be written into the custody decree
 ✅ SIM-card cloning, and the risk hidden in oversharing your number
 ✅ The security basics most people skip: admin passwords and two-factor authentication
 ✅ How to check your email for the forwarding rules that leak everything
 ✅ What AI voice cloning means for fraud and for evidence in court
 ✅ When to bring in a security expert, and what to ask for

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS (+1:00 for the bumper)
 0:00 Intro
 1:00 The surveillance economy, and why an ex doesn't need to be a hacker
 3:52 Kids' devices and why they belong in the decree
 10:31 Getting your lawyer and the pros up to speed
 13:33 Why your phone number is the key to everything
 14:27 SIM-card cloning and the cost of oversharing
 20:09 The admin password almost nobody changes
 23:04 Two-factor, email forwarding, and finding the leaks
 30:08 AI, voice cloning, and evidence you can no longer trust
 34:41 Why a security expert is the new mechanic

CTA (spoken): Worried you're being watched by a high-conflict ex? Book a free discovery call at beentheregotout.com.
 Books: Been There Got Out — https://www.amazon.com/Been-There-Got-Relationships-Circumstances/dp/194627495X/ · When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You — https://www.amazon.com/Been-There-Got-Out-Against/dp/1967674183
 Tags: digital privacy, cyberstalking, phone tracking, sim cloning, two factor authentication, ai voice cloning, coercive control, high conflict divorce, online safety

Kids are frequently more resilient than the adults around them, and Dr. Alina Boie has a reason for it: they have not yet built the filters that decide, in advance, what everything means. Adults look at a situation through years of prior experience. Children are still able to look at it directly. That is a starting point worth knowing if you are certain your separation has already ruined them.

Our guest is Dr. Alina Boie, a psychologist who earned her doctorate at St. John's University and has spent roughly eighteen years working with children, from preschoolers to college-age young adults. She grew up in Transylvania, in Romania, and came on to give this community concrete tools rather than theory.

She starts where most parents do not expect: with you apologizing. Children treat adults as a model, and they copy what you do rather than what you tell them, so admitting you got something wrong teaches more than any speech about honesty. From there she gives the hand model of the brain that she teaches to three-year-olds, the thinking part and the safe part, and why naming the fight-flight-freeze response in advance makes it manageable when it arrives. Practice the skill before the emergency, she says, because nobody learns to ride a bike while they are escaping on one.

Alina and Lisa then take the hard scenarios. A young child told the divorce is your fault, and how to answer that in the language of a three-year-old's own friendships instead of your marriage. Triangulation, and the two things she says every child is trying to fill: attention and control. Her ten-minute daily practice, undivided and child-led, and why it fills both. How to tell your child you had a bad day and ask them to help without handing them the details. And what to do about risky behavior in an older child when your co-parent refuses to agree that anything is wrong, starting with the school, which does not need their permission.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why children are often more adaptable than the adults around them
• The hand model of the brain, and teaching a preschooler why they flip into survival mode
• Judge the behavior, not the person, and what that protects your child from
• What to say when the other parent tells a small child the divorce is your fault
• Attention and control: the two needs an alienating parent exploits when they go unmet
• The ten minutes a day, child-led and undivided, that fills both of those needs
• How to name your own hard day for your child without handing them the details
• Risky behavior and a co-parent who says no: why the school is your first call

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Meeting Dr. Alina Boie, and why kids are often the resilient ones
5:00 Apologizing to your child, and modeling what you preach
7:00 Judging the behavior, not the person
9:00 When one parent blames the other in front of a young child
13:00 Teaching a three-year-old how their brain works
17:00 Fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and faint
19:00 Building the toolbox before the emergency
25:00 Triangulation, and the two buckets: attention and control
31:00 Ten minutes a day, and talking about your own hard day
39:00 Risky behavior, calling the school, and raising independence

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

That constant sense of dread, the feeling you're always one wrong move from getting in trouble, isn't a character flaw and it isn't in your head. Trauma expert Caroline Strawson explains that it's your nervous system doing exactly what it was built to do after a long stretch of not feeling safe.

Caroline walks Lisa through the "traffic lights" of the nervous system, why suppressed trauma shows up as inflammation and illness, and why so many people come out of narcissistic abuse and a brutal court process physically sick, not just sad. Then it gets practical: why the urge to throw yourself into advocacy mid-case is a trauma response, how to prepare for court so you walk in calm, a simple ritual for leaving the courtroom's stress behind, and what somatic work, EMDR, and brain spotting do that talk therapy alone can't.

✅ WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
 ✅ Why narcissistic abuse leaves you in a near-constant state of dread
 ✅ How your nervous system's "traffic lights" (safe, fight-or-flight, shutdown) work
 ✅ Why unprocessed trauma turns into inflammation, illness, and disease
 ✅ The reason talk therapy alone can sometimes make trauma feel worse
 ✅ Why the urge to throw yourself into advocacy mid-case is a trauma response
 ✅ How to prepare for court so you walk in calm instead of flooded
 ✅ A simple ritual for leaving the courtroom's stress at the courtroom
 ✅ What somatic experiencing, EMDR, and brain spotting each do

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS (+1:00 for the bumper)
 0:00 Intro
 1:00 Why you feel a constant sense of dread
 7:40 How trauma turns into physical illness
 13:49 The advocacy urge, and why to wait
 23:50 Preparing for court without wrecking your body
 28:40 Washing off the poison after a hearing
 32:29 Somatic work, EMDR, and brain spotting
 37:22 Where to find Caroline

CTA (spoken): Carrying the physical weight of a toxic relationship or court battle? Book a free discovery call at beentheregotout.com.
 Books: Been There Got Out — https://www.amazon.com/Been-There-Got-Relationships-Circumstances/dp/194627495X/ · When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You — https://www.amazon.com/Been-There-Got-Out-Against/dp/1967674183
 Tags: narcissistic abuse recovery, trauma and the body, caroline strawson, nervous system, somatic healing, emdr, brain spotting, life after abuse, healing

There is a common assumption that mediation is only for couples who still get along. Joy Rosenthal spends her days proving otherwise. She keeps high-conflict couples in the same room and helps them reach agreements, and she points out that mediation is one of the few things in life that is both cheaper and better than the alternative.

Joy Rosenthal is a mediator and collaborative lawyer in New York City and a family law professor at CUNY School of Law. Before opening Rosenthal Law and Mediation, she spent about a decade representing children and teenagers in foster care, work that left her convinced the best thing she could do for kids in a divorce was help their parents learn to solve problems together. She is a past president of the Family and Divorce Mediation Council of Greater New York.

In this episode, Joy explains how she screens every client for domestic violence, how someone in an abusive dynamic can sometimes use mediation to get out more safely, and when they should not. She and Lisa talk through why she keeps both parties together rather than shuttling between rooms, why she caps sessions at about two hours, and how she reframes blame into a conversation about what happens next. She lays out collaborative law as a support-heavy middle path, and why, under no-fault divorce, proving the other person was the bad one rarely changes the result.

Joy also tells the story of the mediation she most regrets, an all-day, commercial-style marathon that pressured a client into signing an agreement under duress, and how it shaped the careful, humane way she runs a session now.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why a mediator who wasn't first a litigator may run a calmer, more productive room
• How domestic violence screening works in mediation, and when mediation is and isn't safe
• Why keeping both people in the room can beat the shuttle style that pressures a deal
• Why a two-hour session beats an exhausting all-day marathon
• How a mediator reframes "you did / I didn't" into a forward-looking conversation
• What collaborative law offers when the power imbalance is real
• How to interview a mediator before trusting them with your family

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 From foster-care lawyer to divorce mediator
5:00 Preserving the co-parenting relationship, not just winning
7:00 Screening for domestic violence, and when mediation still fits
11:00 Lawyers in the room, or not
15:00 Turning the past into a forward-looking conversation
19:00 Reading the room: body language and power imbalance
21:00 Collaborative law as a middle path
23:00 Mediating with the kids in mind
27:00 How to find and interview a mediator
33:00 Shuttle vs. keeping everyone together, and the case she regrets

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Joy Rosenthal at Rosenthal Law & Mediation: https://www.joyrosenthal.com/
🔗 Joy Rosenthal on Instagram (@joymediator): https://www.instagram.com/joymediator/

🎧 More with Joy Rosenthal on this podcast
Ep 68: How Divorce Mediation Actually Works
Ep 70: The Four Things Every Divorce Must Settle
Ep 120: Protecting Your Kids in a High-Conflict Divorce

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Adrienne was a small girl who ran the wrong way in a basketball game. She got home still crushed about it, and her mother told her she had been embarrassing. Adrienne says that was the first time she understood she was not going to get a shoulder.

Adrienne is a friend of Lisa's outside the show and a first-time guest on it. She is fifty, married to someone she describes as thoroughly supportive, a stepmother, and the younger sibling of a brother she credits with more of her healing than he knows. She spent twenty-five years in financial services and has recently left to start her own business, having realized her career had carried her further and further from helping anyone. She is also the adult daughter of a mother who was eventually given a formal diagnosis, late in life, when she no longer had the energy to hold the mask in place. Adrienne wanted to speak about it because she used to feel real shame about it and does not anymore.

In this episode she talks about her father, who died a few months before the recording and who was where safety lived in that house. She wishes he had left and taken the two of them, and he apologized to her for not doing it. She also thinks it might not have gone the way she imagines, because as a child she would probably have taken her mother's side. She holds both of those at once for most of the conversation, along with a genuine respect for what her mother built with no support of her own.

Adrienne and Lisa cover the golden child and scapegoat roles, and the point where they swapped. The fight over a wedding video that turned out to be the end, and the apology she asked for two decades later. What she watched her mother do to her brother, and why she thinks the need for maternal care is not a gendered thing. Marrying her mother the first time and her father the second. And the closing question every protective parent in this audience wants answered, where her answer is consistency, and her observation that children work it out eventually, though rarely on the schedule a parent would pick.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• What the first signal looked like to a child too young to name it
• Why she wishes her father had left, and why she is not certain it would have gone better
• How to hold real anger and real fairness toward the same parent at once
• Golden child and scapegoat, and what happens when the roles switch
• The pattern of never getting an apology, and what asking for one twenty years later is like
• How a narcissistic mother affects a son, and why maternal care isn't a gendered need
• The lasting cost: second-guessing yourself and losing trust in your own instincts
• Her advice to a protective parent: consistency, and why children work it out eventually

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Meet Adrienne, why she's talking about it, and the shoulder she never had
6:00 Her father, and the leaving that never happened
9:00 Being fair to her mother, and the diagnosis that came late
14:00 No contact now, and a brother who carries the caretaking
17:00 Marrying your mother, then marrying your father
19:00 The wedding video, and the apology that never came
23:00 What she watched happen to her brother
30:00 What it cost her, and what she gained
35:00 Leaving a 25-year career, and who she was proving wrong
38:00 Advice for protective parents: consistency, and kids seeing it eventually

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Seven years before this conversation, Tracy Malone drove to an ex-partner's house to tell him she had decided to forgive him. She was arrested that night on his complaint, pleaded to one of the charges because fighting them would have cost thirty thousand dollars she did not have, and still carries the record. She has since learned that he had his ex-wife arrested three times.

Tracy Malone is the founder of Narcissist Abuse Support, a coach, an author, and one of the earliest voices in narcissistic abuse education online. Lisa first found her work years ago and has called her a mentor since. Tracy runs support groups where, she says, it is routine to find several people in the same room who were arrested by their partner, which is what convinced her that the silence around it was the real problem.

She describes what happened step by step, without softening it: the mandatory-arrest rule that requires an officer responding to a domestic call in her state to take someone in, the booking, the ten hours before a judge, the shackles for the walk to the courthouse inside the jail. Then the three-page typed statement claiming she had been asked to leave seven times, and the recording that appeared weeks later with that line inserted into it. Two university audio departments reviewed the file and identified the cuts. The department asked him whether he had edited it, he said no, and another charge was added.

The last part of the conversation is about living with it. Probation, weekly community service, needing permission to travel to her son's graduation, the friends who decided she must have deserved it, and the months she stopped leaving her house because the order meant a chance encounter could send her back. Tracy explains how she let go of the shame, what she learned when the other woman in the car had the order lifted from Australia so the two of them could compare notes, and the change-the-story approach she now teaches: a short, calm version of events for people who have not shown you they are safe.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why an arrest gets used as a strategy, and why the person who calls first tends to be believed
• What a mandatory-arrest rule means when officers cannot tell who is telling the truth
• What actually happens in the hours after a domestic-violence arrest, step by step
• Why an edited recording can still be treated as evidence even when experts identify cuts
• The costs that outlast the case: legal fees, probation, community service, a permanent record
• How shame keeps people silent, and what happens in a room where others were arrested too
• The change-the-story approach: a short version for people who have not earned the long one
• What to document if your ex tries to provoke an incident while an order is in place

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why false arrest goes unspoken, and the shame attached to it
5:00 The mandatory-arrest rule on a domestic call
6:00 The forgiveness sermon, and six minutes in a garage
10:00 He calls the police, and the knock comes that night
12:00 Booked, shackled, and ten hours before a judge
15:00 The recording that surfaced three weeks later, with cuts in it
19:00 The plea, the record, probation, and 70 hours of community service
24:00 The friends who took his side, and the year she stopped going out
28:00 Door number three: an order lifted from Australia, and comparing notes
32:00 Same man, different masks: what each partner was there to supply
37:00 Change the story: what to say to people who have not earned the details

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Tracy Malone at Narcissist Abuse Support: https://narcissistabusesupport.com/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Two teenage sisters wanted to spend part of the summer with their father rather than all of it, and had no idea how to say so. Dr. Barb Hughson spent several sessions rehearsing it with them, and was in the room when they made the call. Their father did not react the way they had braced for.

This is the second conversation with Dr. Barb Hughson and Dr. Wayne, who are friends of Been There Got Out outside the work. Dr. Wayne has taught for over fifty years, across every grade from preschool to graduate school, and has taught the grandchildren of his first students. He now runs mindfulness and social-emotional learning sessions with kids and tutors alongside them. Dr. Barb began as a therapist in private practice with children and families, ran divorce groups in schools, and moved into family law mediation, parent coaching, and court-ordered parent education, which she now delivers around the country.

The practical spine of this episode is helping a child use their own voice. Dr. Wayne teaches an emotional temperature scale, one to ten, which doubles as a way for a kid to close a call a parent will not release. Dr. Barb talks about children who become the emotional caretaker of a needy parent, and about teaching them the language of emotions so a feeling has words instead of a blowout. Dr. Wayne extends that to the body, asking kids where the tightness is, which is often easier for them to answer.

On reunification, Dr. Barb is direct. She describes a father who ignored her advice, pushed his way back into a teenager's life, and lost him. Her alternative is a slow return, and specifically supervised visits with a therapist doing the supervising, because a clinician sees what a lay supervisor does not. Dr. Wayne and Dr. Barb also cover sharing your own struggle with a child without turning them into your therapist, the seven repetitions it takes before a new boundary becomes a habit, imagining a bubble that deflects an ex's energy, where to put your attention when a child is bonded to the unhealthy parent, and the difference the word "yet" makes to a parent who believes their story will never be heard. Dr. Barb closes on writing parenting plans in three to six month chunks and revisiting them, and Lisa pushes back hard on what that would mean in a high-conflict case.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• The one-to-ten emotional temperature scale, and how a child can use it to end a call
• How to rehearse a hard conversation with your child before they have to have it
• What to do when a child refuses therapy, and why their motivation for going matters
• Why a rushed reunification can cost a parent the relationship for years
• Supervised visits with a therapist present as a stepping stone you can ask for
• Teaching kids the language of emotions, and asking about the body when words fail
• How to share your own struggle with your child without making them your therapist
• The seven repetitions it takes before a new boundary holds

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Part two, self-care, and why things can be okay
4:00 Dr. Wayne and Dr. Barb: fifty years teaching, therapy into mediation
8:00 Helping a child end a call the other parent will not let go
11:00 The two sisters who rehearsed telling their dad about the summer
15:00 When a child refuses therapy, and what has to happen before it
20:00 Reunification therapy, and why pushing in too fast blows it up
23:00 Supervised visits with a therapist as a stepping stone
26:00 The language of emotions, the body, and sharing your humanity
34:00 Seven repetitions, the bubble, and holding a new boundary
39:00 Trauma bonding, where you put your attention, and the word "yet"
46:00 Parenting plans in chunks, and Lisa's pushback for high-conflict cases

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Dr. Barb Hughson's court-ordered parent education classes: https://www.courtparentclass.com/
🔗 Dr. Barb Hughson: https://www.drbarbhughson.com/
🔗 Dr. Wayne at Great Masters: https://www.greatmastersinc.com/

🎧 More with Dr. Barb Hughson and Dr. Wayne on this podcast
Ep 2: Trauma-Informed Mediation
Ep 19: Mediation and the Child's Voice
Ep 106: Will My Kids Be Okay?
Ep 121: When Your Child's Anger Turns Physical
Ep 143: Steadying Kids in Divorce

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

A client of ours was pregnant, had embryos in cryostorage, and asked a question nobody on our side had a ready answer for: can the parenting plan say what happens to them? This conversation is the answer, from someone who works with those embryos for a living.

Jacob Schuman is a career embryologist with roughly two decades in IVF laboratories. He holds a master's degree from Eastern Virginia Medical School plus the certifications required to manage a lab, and he also consults privately for patients who have been through multiple cycles and want a laboratory perspective on their results. He is candid that outcomes vary widely between clinics, and that a lab's technique and protocols account for a meaningful share of that variation.

On the legal side, Schuman points everyone back to the consents. Those forms specify a disposition in the event of divorce, the death of a partner, or an unpaid storage bill, and courts start there. He walks through Davis v. Davis, the Tennessee Supreme Court case that declined to classify embryos as either property or life and reached for a middle category, weighing one partner's choice not to procreate against the other's wish to. He also describes a more recent Connecticut decision where the court simply enforced what the couple had signed at the clinic. Most states have no personhood rule here, which is why the paperwork carries so much weight.

The practical half covers what to work out before a retrieval rather than during a divorce. The four things that can happen to a stored embryo, that storage itself has no shelf life as long as the bill is paid, and whether a signed parenting plan can amend the clinic's consent later, which Schuman thinks depends on whether both parties agree to the change. He also clears up common misconceptions, including that a larger number of embryos beats a smaller number of good ones, and points to the professional organizations worth reading before you make any of these decisions.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why the consent forms you sign at the clinic decide what happens to embryos later
• What those consents cover: divorce, a partner's death, and an unpaid storage bill
• Davis v. Davis, and the middle category courts reached for instead of property or life
• How courts tend to rule when no consent can be produced
• Whether a later parenting plan or agreement can amend the clinic paperwork
• The four dispositions available for a stored embryo
• The questions worth asking each other before starting IVF
• Common misconceptions, starting with more embryos being better than fewer good ones

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 What an embryologist does, and why lab technique changes outcomes
5:00 What happens to embryos after separation, and why the consents decide
7:00 The two kinds of IVF disputes that reach a court
9:00 Davis v. Davis, and treating embryos as neither property nor persons
12:00 A Connecticut case that enforced the signed consent
13:00 When there's no record, and how states tend to rule
14:00 Can a parenting plan change what the clinic consent says
16:00 The questions to ask each other before starting IVF
17:00 The four options for a stored embryo, and what storage involves
18:00 Common misconceptions about IVF
21:00 Where to research, and how to reach Jacob

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

California Family Code section 3044 says that once a parent has been found to have committed abuse against an intimate partner, custody is presumed against them. Subsection (b) is the part almost nobody reads: it is the list of what that parent has to do to rebut the presumption. Brian Pakpour walks through both, along with everything else that makes an infant's parenting plan different from every other one.

Brian Pakpour is a family law attorney in Davis, California, about twenty minutes from Sacramento. He has practiced family law and nothing else for roughly a decade, which is what he went to law school to do, and a large online audience knows him as brithefamilyguy on TikTok. He is a returning guest, and the reason for this episode is that his comment section keeps filling with the same question: what does a parenting plan look like when the child is a baby?

The answers are specific. On pregnancy, Brian's position is that nothing in the Dobbs decision changed the constitutional right to travel between states, so a parent who intends to move should go while the child is in utero, because no order can hold them. On a newborn sixty miles from the other parent, he describes visits of two or three hours a few days a week, in the home or at a park, and where supervision fits when there is a protective order: a paid professional supervisor as the higher standard, or a trusted relative when flexibility around feeding matters more. On step-up schedules, his principle is that an infant cannot hold attention for long, so frequency beats duration, and duration only starts to matter as the child gets older.

Then the harder material. Brian is a proponent of breastfeeding personally and still tells listeners what a court will do with it, which is balance it against research on having two involved parents, and he argues the breastfeeding studies are less settled than people assume because of what they do not control for. He explains why pumping strengthens your position, describes clients who have used breastfeeding as leverage, and traces California's old Tender Years Doctrine and why it went away. He covers what a court investigates when one parent alleges substance use or untreated mental illness, how a rotating work schedule can be written into a plan, why arguing that a stepparent should not cover a few hours has never worked for him, what happens to frozen embryos in a divorce and why the clinic contract usually controls, and why no agreement to waive child support survives contact with a court.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why frequency beats duration for an infant, and what that means for what you ask for
• Moving while pregnant: what the right to travel does and does not allow after Dobbs
• Professionally versus non-professionally supervised visits, and when each fits a baby
• How step-up schedules build from an hour a few times a week to a first overnight
• What a judge weighs against exclusive breastfeeding, and how pumping changes it
• California Family Code 3044: the custody presumption, and what rebuts it
• Frozen embryos in a divorce, and why the clinic contract usually decides
• Why you cannot agree your way out of child support, in any state

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why infant parenting plans keep coming up
3:00 Moving while pregnant, and the right to travel after Dobbs
5:00 A newborn 60 miles away, and supervised visits
11:00 Step-up schedules, and why frequency beats duration
13:00 Breastfeeding versus two involved parents, and how a judge balances it
17:00 When breastfeeding becomes leverage, and the Tender Years Doctrine
21:00 Substance use and mental health: what a court investigates first
27:00 Rotating work schedules, and a stepparent filling the gaps
31:00 Embryos after IVF, and why you can't contract out of child support
37:00 Relocating across the country with a baby

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Brian Pakpour at Pakpour Banks LLP: https://pakpourbanks.com/brian-pakpour/
🔗 Brian Pakpour on TikTok (@brithefamilyguy): https://www.tiktok.com/@brithefamilyguy

🎧 More with Brian Pakpour on this podcast
Ep 17: Parenting Plans That Survive a High-Conflict Ex

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.